Trail carbine vs brush gun series#

Meanwhile, Field Marshal Sir Colin Campbell had massed 31,000 troops to retake Lucknow in March, after a 19-day siege of the rebel citadel. The squadronвЂ™s Sharps carbines doubtless boosted the defendersвЂ™ firepower until the last assault was repulsed in late February 1858. The 8th Hussars took ship in Cork with the 17th Lancers early in October and reached Bombay in mid-December.ДЄ squadron of the 7th Hussars was detached at newly recaptured Cawnpore and sent to reinforce the 4,000-man garrison holding Alambagh, an outpost near Lucknow, which had been under repeated attacks since mid-November. The 2nd Dragoon Guards and the 7th Hussars landed in India on November 27. Two of them were fated to miss most of the action-the 1st Dragoon Guards were crippled by a dearth of suitable mounts, while the 3rd Dragoon Guard was employed mainly in courier and escort duties. Reinforcements were mustered in England, including all of the Sharps-armed mounted regiments. The 36,000 British troops on the scene were hard-pressed to survive, much less keep the uprising from spreading.Д«y the late summer of 1857, however, the tide was slowly turning against the mutineers. The native troops, called sepoys, left Bengal and the Punjab in flames. Meanwhile, in India, anti-British sentiments came to a head when Hindu and Muslim soldiers serving in the army of the East India Company, incited by rumors-eventually proved false-that the paper-cased small-arms cartridges issued to them were greased with tallow from both pigs and cattle, mutinied. Deliveries followed to the 8th KingвЂ™s Royal Irish Hussars, the 1st KingвЂ™s Dragoon Guards, the 2nd QueenвЂ™s Bays Dragoon Guards and the 3rd Prince of WalesвЂ™ Dragoon Guards at their home depots. The 7th QueenвЂ™s Own Hussars received 500 of the new weapons on July 10, 1857. Lacking the production capacity to manufacture 6,000 such weapons on short notice, Sharps signed a contract with Robbins & Lawrence of Hartford, Conn., on November 9, 1855, to fabricate вЂњ500 carbines of 32 bore, with 6 grooves and 6,000 to be вЂbored to the model sent from EnglandвЂ™ with 3 grooves.вЂќ Of the latter, 3,000 were to have 21-inch barrels and 3,000 were to have 18-inch barrels.ДЄlthough the contractor eventually incurred some penalties for late deliveries, 6,000 carbines were in British hands before autumn 1856-too late to see service in the Crimea. 06-inch increase in bore diameter, no significant modifications were required-until late September, when the British purchasing agent specified that all of Christian SharpsвЂ™ carbines had to be fitted with the Maynard patent tape-priming device. for 1,000 carbines of the improved 1852 pattern, followed in August by an order for another 5,000. In July 1855, the British placed an order with the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Co. 733-caliber ball that was potent but woefully inaccurate past 50 yards. By 1854, the standard cavalry long arm was the Pattern 1842 Victoria carbine, a percussion muzzleloader bored to take a. An early example came in 1853, when the new pattern of Enfield rifled musket was adopted for general field service.Д«ritish cavalry regiments had used a variety of carbines since the Napoleonic wars, such as smoothbore Pagets and Nocks and, for a fortunate few, rifled Baker carbines. Peace was being upheld again on the RajвЂ™s Northwest Frontier by a handful of troopers armed with blades forged in Sheffield and carbines crafted in Connecticut.ДЄfter decades of complacency, the Crimean War of 1854 spurred the British army to reform its command structure and modernize its weapons. At that point the Afghan hillmen, puzzled at the speed with which the Europeans reloaded their weapons, retreated over the next ridgeline. A hussar, mouthing prayers in a Donegal brogue as he worked the lever of his Sharps carbine rifle to slide another linen-cased cartridge home in its smoking breech, dropped an elder warrior. Men and horses fell, while other troopers dismounted and formed a loose skirmish line to return fire. Suddenly a score of Jezail muskets crackled from the cover of earthworks sited well upslope.

Trail carbine vs brush gun series#

The trail wound through the mountain pass in a series of blind switchbacks that made the use of flankers and advance scouts impossible as the cavalry patrol edged cautiously forward.